


All That I've Got

by jonnyhustle



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Chicago Blackhawks, Fluff, Happy Ending, M/M, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, background Duncan Keith/Brent Seabrook - Freeform, demiromantic Patrick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-13
Updated: 2015-03-13
Packaged: 2018-03-17 15:53:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3535253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonnyhustle/pseuds/jonnyhustle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><a href="http://kaners-collarbone.tumblr.com">Joss</a> prompted: <b>AU in which every time a person falls in love, a red line like a tally mark appears on their wrist</b>. I may have taken some liberties with the "on the wrist" part, though.</p><p>  "<i>You could love multiple people across the span of your life, or you could love only one, but everyone was capable of love, they said. And because Patrick was young, because he still held the belief that teachers held all the knowledge in the universe, he thought it was true. This is where his troubles really began.</i></p><p>  <i>He remembers a boy on his Junior Flyers team almost a year ago. Just like that assembly, Patrick can’t forget Jonathan Toews, if not because of his hockey skills then because of the sheer amount of tallys that already marked up his skin. They’d met for the first time when they were eleven, a couple of years before they played on the Flyers together, hadn’t spoken besides the compulsory handshake after the game when Patrick had stared longingly at Jonathan’s single tally, muttering, “Good game,” even though it hadn’t been.</i>"</p>
            </blockquote>





	All That I've Got

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bohnem990](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bohnem990/gifts).



> I really enjoyed writing this, and would be absolutely stoked if people were interested in reading any more so I could write a sequel. You should let me know.
> 
> Although Joss prompted me, I was also heavily influenced by [this](http://riley-coyote.tumblr.com/post/99279944130/jaxtellerhelps-tuckedshirts-pretendersrpa) post. Title came from _The Used's_ [song of the same name](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgB_JwcuPg0).
> 
> [Tumblr is here](http://toestoewstazer.tumblr.com/).

Patrick Kane is fourteen and a half when he steals a lip liner pencil from the makeup his sister hides in the bottom drawer of the bathroom cabinet. He’s not proud, but it’s the only thing in the house that’s the right shade of red. If he were to pick black it would be too obvious that it was fake. 

With shaking hands he draws a solid line on the inside of his wrist. He doesn’t contemplate the placement. The inner wrist is the most common spot and there’s nothing special about Patrick that makes him think it would be elsewhere. Besides, he’s looked. If there was a tally mark on a single inch of skin accessible with a mirror, he would have found it. 

The line he makes with the lip liner is too bold. It smudges as soon as he moves his hand, and the texture isn’t right. It’s too creamy, clearly sits on the skin, rather than looking like a natural part of it. He can feel his face stinging with embarrassment, even if he’s the only one in the bathroom, as he lets out a frustrated sigh. 

His cousin, James, had turned up at school that morning eagerly shoving his wrist in the face of anyone who cared to take a look, even showed it to those who weren’t. He rambled off a list of who he thought it could be for, because when you’re a teenager every small crush feels like the real deal. James never noticed the look on Patrick’s face, or if he did he chose not to acknowledge it. That would’ve just been a very James way of going about things, anyway. They were close, always hovering around one another at family gatherings and trying to prank Patrick’s younger sisters, but that didn’t mean they were nice to each other. 

If anything, James would’ve just rubbed his wrist in Patrick’s face harder if he had have noticed the way his cousin just shut down every time it was brought up. And, that was the thing, wasn’t it? It was constantly being brought up. All day, Patrick couldn’t escape it.

“Did you hear?” followed him down the hallways.

“Has she met his parents yet?” was a question he kept being asked too, even though he didn’t even know who _she_ was. 

He just shrugged each of them off, snapping that they had to stop acting like it was such a big deal. Caring about tally marks were for the younger children, he argued. Patrick hadn’t been brought up to lie, but it was a defence mechanism. The tally marks were a rite of passage, having the first one turn up was somewhere on par of a girl getting her period or a boy waking up after a particularly good dream with sticky sheets. Patrick didn’t want to wait around for it any more. He wanted to be a _man_. He’d been waiting ever since eight-year-old Chloe Ethers turned up to school with a single red line in the crease of her elbow. It was a common spot, for the Ethers’, apparently. 

Patrick had been jealous when he saw it, even though he called her a freak because it wasn’t sitting over her wrist.

His grade had been forced to attend a special assembly that day, when it became clear that none of the teachers could get through a sentence without being interrupted by someone wanting to talk about Chloe’s mark. Patrick had been just as interested as the rest of the students, had seen his mom and dad’s, and was finally looking forward to getting the real explanation. The thing about being a kid is that no one takes you seriously, that everything is written off as _childish_ and _silly_. Crushes weren’t something to be taken seriously unless they ended up permanently tattooed onto your skin in the handwriting of your “crush”, your soulmate, the person you loved. 

Soulmarks, the teachers explained, were a very important part of becoming an adult. They signified those who held your heart, but it did not necessarily mean that that person had a crush on you back. The terms they used were just as childish and silly as the teachers thought the kids were, but it got the point across. Someone could have multiple “soulmates” and crushes and loves, and they couldn’t be explained, you couldn’t choose who you loved. 

You could love multiple people across the span of your life, or you could love only one, but everyone was capable of love, they said. And because Patrick was young, because he still held the belief that teachers held all the knowledge in the universe, he thought it was true. This is where his troubles really began.

He remembers a boy on his Junior Flyers team almost a year ago. Just like that assembly, Patrick can’t forget Jonathan Toews, if not because of his hockey skills then because of the sheer amount of tallys that already marked up his skin. They’d met for the first time when they were eleven, a couple of years before they played on the Flyers together, hadn’t spoken besides the compulsory handshake after the game when Patrick had stared longingly at Jonathan’s single tally, muttering, “Good game,” even though it hadn’t been.

By the time they made up the Junior Flyers roster, Jon’s tallys had more than tripled. There had been five. Five. Patrick didn’t understand it. He didn’t even have one. He’d heard the chirps the other boys on the team made, about how Jonny was a girl, just dumb things that thirteen-year-olds say when faced with the concept of love. Patrick had joined in, because of course he had. He didn’t even have one, and he couldn’t admit that upset him.

So, Patrick thinks about that in the here and now, with no marks on his wrist besides the chaffing of the washcloth from where he’s been rubbing at the lip liner. 

Someone knocks on the door, and Patrick ignores it. Scrubs harder at his wrist, doesn’t understand why it isn’t coming off. It’s sensitive to touch, hurts every time he runs the cloth over it, but it’s still smeared with red as the knocking on the door intensifies, and even though he can’t tell if it’s the liner or simply his skin, he doesn’t want to get caught doing what he’s doing.

“I’m coming!” He finally snaps, throwing the pencil across the bathroom, wincing when it hits the porcelain of the bathtub, “can’t even take a shit in this place without being interrupted.”

He’s being unfair, he knows, feels guilty about it as soon as he opens the door and sees his mother’s very unimpressed face. It’s not a face he sees a lot, admittedly. He does his best to balance school and hockey, always helps out with the dishes and does his homework on time. He doesn’t bother his sisters, and tries to keep James out of the trouble that is somehow magnetised toward him, and is constantly being told he’s “a pleasure to have in class”, so the look hits him hard. 

“Patrick Timothy Kane,” she says, frowning, “I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately.” 

He hangs his head when he hears those words, subconsciously rubbing at the inside of his wrist. He doesn’t realise he’s doing it, couldn’t tell you if it’s still an effort to get the liner off or because he’s answering her question.

 _This. This is what’s gotten into me,_ he thinks. 

“I’m sorry, Ma,” he responds, still not meeting her eyes, “I thought you were Jackie.” 

“Patrick,” her voice is still sharp, critical, but then she looks down, sees what he’s doing to his wrist. Her voice instantly softens, her frown getting less severe, “Pat, you have nothing to be embarrassed about. You’re only fourteen, you have plenty of time for love.” 

“James got his,” he reasons, because James doesn’t deserve one, James still acts like girls have cooties, “he wouldn’t stop showing it off all day.”

She stays silent, just ushers Patrick over to the edge of the bathtub so he has somewhere to sit. She rummages through the medicine cabinet, pulling out the spray Patrick uses whenever he gets a bite. She takes his arm in her hand, turning it over until his wrist is exposed. The skin is still raw, feels warm when she presses her palm to it and holds on tightly in an effort to soothe the skin. 

“What if it never happens?”

He’s not proud of how quiet his voice is. He’s never been particularly talkative, not even during games when refraining from chirping requires more of his attention than the game itself. Still, he’s not a particularly quiet kid either. He’s outgoing, but not overwhelming. He says what it is on his mind, when he has something to say, but he’s not going to talk shit just for the sake of it. 

That’s more of James’ thing, more of the rest of the team’s thing. Patrick prefers to stay silent, to get underestimated so he can prove them wrong when players on the other teams chirp him on everything from his size to his ability on the ice.

“It might not,” his mom agrees, and there it goes. Patrick can feel his stomach drop before she continues, “and that’s okay. Or it might take another twenty years, and that’s still okay, Pat.”

“I don’t want to wait twenty years,” he admits, leaning into her so he doesn’t actually have to look at her.

“It’s going to be okay,” she reiterates, squeezing his wrist, “I promise. Your dad and I, your sisters, we’re going to love you no matter what.”

There’s nothing Patrick can really do but nod. It’s not as if he can argue that there’s something wrong with him, that he doesn’t understand the crushes the kids at school talk about, or how the girl who admitting to liking him still only has a single red tally mark on her wrist. 

He’s been avoiding her ever since he found out, can’t look her in the eyes now that she’s come up to him and straight-up asked, “Is there something wrong with me?” before standing on her tippy toes to kiss him. 

The question was being asked by the wrong person, he’d thought. He hadn’t answered her, had just stood there with his lips firmly closed even when she tried to force them open with her tongue. As far as kisses go, it wasn’t great for a first. Probably couldn’t get much worse, actually. When she finally pulled away, he pretended he couldn’t see the way her eyes had welled with tears. 

He, at least, held onto his until he was locked away in the privacy of a bathroom stall. 

Something on his face must give away what he’s thinking about, because his mom just draws him in tighter, doesn’t let go.

“Oh, Pat.”

“I’m sorry,” he apologises, voice choking, “I’m sorry, mom.”

She squeezes his wrist again, says in a quiet but sure voice like she’s trying not to spook him, “you have nothing to apologise for.” 

Patrick doesn’t feel the same way. He’s heard the rumours, has had to face the friends of the girl who’d tried to kiss him. There’s a lot he has to apologise for, in his opinion.

***

Patrick still doesn’t have any marks when he meets Jonathan Toews for the second time. They’re on opposing teams, and Patrick’s just trying to work out how this guy plays, when the rest of his teammates get caught up on talking about whether or not the opposing Captain, Toews, falls in love more than he shoots. 

Patrick argues, “Yeah, he shoots a lot though,” because he’s getting sick of talking about it. 

“That’s the point though,” one of the kids say, as if Patrick’s stupid, as if he doesn’t spend most of his time with the guys deliberately trying to turn the conversation topic away from the soulmarks.

A couple of days after the lip liner incident he’d been cleaning his room when he came across a red felt tip marker. The point had been thinner than the liner he’d tried, and went on smoother without looking obviously out of place. It didn’t smudge unless he actively rubbed at it, and just having the mark there, even though he knew it was fake, helped him to relax. 

His parents didn’t ask any questions about the mark, and his mom didn’t try to pull him aside and have some big talk about how he didn’t need to pretend, how he was perfect the way he was. After Jackie had her dessert taken away after dinner one night, when she’d bugging him because she had to hear about Pat’s mark from the school gossip mill, his sisters just let the topic drop as well. 

It was a big deal, in the Kane household, to be sent away after dinner without dessert. 

That night, Patrick had made sure to spend a couple of extra hours sitting with his parents on the couch, just watching TV, instead of immediately locking himself in his room like he usually would. 

His mom hadn’t questioned him, just made space for Patrick to sit beside both her and his dad. 

“How’s James?” His dad asked, briefly turning away from the TV to look at Patrick, “Did he talk to that girl yet?” 

“It turned black,” Patrick admitted, subconsciously pushing the inside of his wrist against his leg so it can’t be seen now that he’s washed the mark off, “but he still doesn’t know who it is.”

His dad had laughed, “That sounds like James. Does he have any idea?” 

“He thought it might have been Laura but when he asked her out she turned him down in front of everyone.” 

“That wasn’t very nice of her,” his mom chimed in, looking critically at where Dad was trying to hold himself back from laughing, “she didn’t have to do it in front of everyone.

Patrick hadn’t cared at the time, and he didn’t think James did too much either. James was now spending just as much time trying to find Patrick’s other half as he was trying to find his own requited one. Patrick felt guilty, sometimes, still hated talking about the marks in general, but it did help him relax when he never could beforehand.

It hadn’t completely gotten rid of that feeling of having something wrong with him, though.

That’s probably why he still gets dressed in the stalls before away games, when he’s forgotten his pen. The guys chirp him for using a stall, and he rolls his eyes and throws their words back at them, tacking on a “your mom,” whenever it fits. 

There’s little risk of one of the boys even trying to look at his wrist when they’re getting changed because, come on, it’s much more important to look at other parts, you know, for comparison. Patrick knows he’s not the only one who sneaks a peak every now and then. Still, he doesn’t want to risk it, actively has to shut the thoughts down when he considers what might happen if his teammates realise he’s spent the last couple of years drawing a line onto the same part of his wrist every day.

It’s such a dumb thing. Patrick hates himself every day. Those few seconds of uncapping the pen, willing his hands not to shake as he draws that small line, is just as hard as every day he spent before it with his wrists completely bare. Even if no one else knows, he’s just reaffirming to himself that there’s something wrong with the way he is. It’s a lot to go through to just feel confident enough to leave his bedroom. Even his sisters haven’t seen him without the mark since he started drawing it on, and his mom might have, he’s not too sure, but she never said anything. Was probably more taken aback that she’d walked in on Patrick doing something no mother should ever have to witness.

He gets dressed silently, listening to his teammates chirp him, chirp one another, chirp Toews, talk about how they hooked up with some girl when they probably didn’t. He slams out of the stall when he’s dressed in his gear, when he has his gloves and everything covered. 

He leaves the locker room in a huff of anger, shooting a look to each of his teammates even though it’s not his fault he’s the freak. The guys don’t say anything as he leaves, probably finally taking the hint after he’s spent all day shutting down all of their attempts at conversation. To be fair, it’s not his fault that they don’t have any interesting to talk about.

He goes out onto the rink and starts warming up, is the only player until Toews steps out as well. Patrick looks up from his skates, sees the look on Toews’ face that he thinks might be a mirror-image of his own. 

At first, they stay on opposite sides of the rink. Then, Patrick decides he wants to see what he can get away with. He’s still just as quiet as he’s always been, only chirps when he gets so frustrated he can’t not or he’s practically bullied into it, but he makes his statements non-verbally. 

Actions speak louder than words and all that, he figures.

Toews shoots him an annoyed look, tells him to look at where he’s going when Kane is just seconds away from crashing into the Captain.

Patrick scoffs. He has enough control not to run into someone, thank you. Even if the other kids still sometimes experience a crash on the ice, Patrick thankfully hasn’t had one in years. 

He skates away, pushing himself harder than he had been, if only eager to prove to Toews that he’s not an amateur. 

This is his statement.

He sticks to showing off, trying to prove himself to Toews, throughout the duration of the game. He plays harder than he usually would. Most of the team are only playing because it’s something to do, or because their dads’ played hockey and forced them into it, but Patrick’s here because he wants to get to the NHL. 

Patrick’s here to prove that he can make it.

Toews seems to be on similar footing.

In the end, Patrick’s team wins. Toews looks angry when they shake hands, but he still sounds sincere when he says, “you played a good game.”

“Thanks,” Patrick returns, forcing himself to make eye contact when what he really wants to do is rip off Toews’ gloves and look at his marks, “you too.”

It’s Toews’ reaction that finally does grab Patrick’s attention from where he’s trying to bore holes into the gloves. He shuts down at the compliment, even though it was just a standard thing Patrick’s been saying to everyone, and clenches his jaw, “I could’ve been better.”

Patrick doesn’t know what he can say. He’s not sure if he should point out that Toews almost singlehandedly carried his team out on the ice. He’s not used to this level of intensity in games that don’t really carry any weight in the bigger picture, so all he can do is shrug. What’s it to him if Toews is irrationally hard on himself?

Still, “No, seriously, man, you almost had me worried out there,” comes out before he can stop himself.

Toews blinks, nods, moves on to the next person.

Patrick doesn’t stop and let himself think of why he wants to force Toews to sit down so he can be lectured on just how wrong he is. He could probably come up with a few answers without putting too much thought into it, like how he knows what it’s like to constantly be a disappointment, of what it’s like to not live up to expectations, or to drag others down when they’re happy. Most of Toews’ team just seem happy that the loss wasn’t as big as what it could’ve been. 

The look that was on Toews’ face when he said, “I could’ve been better,” reflected exactly how Patrick felt when Jackie had come home from school with a bold, black line neatly sitting in the centre of her wrist.

Later, when they’re on the bus back home, Patrick forces an apology out to his team. He only says it because he wants to ask how many marks Toews has now. 

It opens up a whole new conversation he’s not ready for, but he still learns that the Canadian wonderkid is almost close to completing his second set of tally marks. Their goalie tells him this, with wide eyes and an incredulous stare.

“I haven’t even completed my first,” the kid says, pulling up the hem of his jeans to bare the marks on his ankle, “and his are already mostly black as well. I don’t know how he does it.”

Patrick doesn’t lift his sleeve up, doesn’t look at his own ‘mark’ like the goalie is clearly expecting him to do so. He does, however, press his thumb against where it should be.

“Yeah,” he agrees, voice not as strong as it could be, “Crazy, huh?”

***

A couple of years later he hears that Jonathan Toews has been drafted by the Chicago Blackhawks. It doesn’t seem like much time passes before he’s suddenly signing a contract of his own just a couple of months later. He doesn’t understand it, still refrains from pinching himself when he walks in and out of the meetings. 

They’re standing in the United Center when Jonny, and Patrick can call him that now that they’ve hung out a few times, suddenly says, “We’re going to fill this place up.”

He’s flat-out grinning, arms spread wide like he’s gesturing to all 20,000 seats in the arena.

“Yeah?” He asks, smiling almost as much as Jonny is.

“Yeah, we’re going to bring hockey back to the city of Chicago.”

Patrick laughs, excited about his future in the NHL, excited about his future with this kid that he always saw at games but never really got to speak to.

“Yeah, we are,” he grins, punches Jon on the shoulder.

They haven’t really hung out a lot, but it’s enough to know that they don’t particularly get along well. For all intents and purposes, they’re completely different people. Jonny takes himself too seriously, takes Patrick too seriously, and when he finally does make a joke Patrick can’t even laugh because too much time passes before he realises that, holy shit. Jonathan Toews actually does have a sense of humour, even if it’s dry.

Patrick doesn’t spend all of his time staring at Jonny’s wrists, or interrogating him over each of the marks. He forces it out of his mind, now that he’s accepted the fact that he’s eighteen years old and still doesn’t have any tally marks. 

He stopped using the pen soon after the last game he played against Jonny, even if he doesn’t advertise his empty wrists. Jonny, with his two completed sets of tally marks and sheer sense of responsibility that has Patrick stumbling. Patrick, who spent years hiding who he was, who is pretty much still hiding. 

They shouldn’t get along, they _don’t_ , but it works for them.

***

They’re having a couple of drinks and nachos as a team bonding experience when the tally marks are brought up for the first time. Patrick’s been playing as a Blackhawk for a couple of months short of a year, and he realises he’s been lured into a false sense of security, thinking that the guys actually valued each other’s privacy. He hasn’t gone back to drawing his own mark on, had only considered it once before a convention, but ended up settling on wearing some friendship bracelets his sisters made him, and a leather band from the war his grandfather gave him.

He holds out for as long as he can, just passively listens to the guys talking about theirs. Seabs and Duncs admit, sounding cautious, that they’ve both recently developed new marks even though they’re both in committed relationships. 

“Are you sure it’s not for Kelly-Rae?” Sharpy asks, rubbing the Doritos’ dust off on Patrick’s shirt before grabbing Duncs’ arm.

“Pretty sure,” Seabs answers for him, “it’s weird, though, right? Having reciprocated marks for someone else?”

Seabs looks expectantly at Patrick, and Patrick looks away. He doesn’t feel as if he has a right to answer what is or isn’t weird when it comes to marks and relationships.

He hasn’t been with anyone for a while, has taken to using hockey as an excuse to keep his distance with hook-ups. He certainly stays away from the girls that act as if reciprocating marks are the be-all and end-all. It took too many years for him to realise he couldn’t fuck his way to getting a mark, not understanding that sex didn’t mean romance, so he stays away from those girls who haven’t realised that yet – the ones who act as if he’s nothing more than a challenge.

He’d lost his virginity to a girl like that, and that had apparently become his type for the next couple of years. She’d been pretty pissed when he’d never developed a mark, when hers didn’t turn black like she was so sure it would. Apparently she, and a few other girls at their school, had been under the impression that they’d be able to make Patrick Kane, the Patrick Kane who had just as many rumours following him regarding his soulmark situation as he did his likelihood of being drafted into the NHL, fall in love.

It hadn’t worked, of course, even when Patrick had finally confided in James. 

“Maybe I’m not doing it right,” Patrick had admitted, thankful that James had long passed sober and probably wouldn’t be able to remember the conversation the next day, “we’ve only done it the once.” 

They’d tried a couple of more times. Patrick beginning to use his bare arm as an excuse whenever he wanted to get laid. It took him to long to realise what he was doing, what it meant when she would pull away and he’d make a jab about how it was obvious why he didn’t have a mark for her. 

Years later, he still feels guilty. 

He’d apologise to her, if he could, but just like the first girl he ever kissed he’s too embarrassed about the whole situation. He doesn’t ever want to face her again, not after she’d thrown her wrist in his face, said, “Yeah, because I’m the one not trying hard enough.” 

She’d been the last girl in the school to get her first mark. Patrick just didn’t realise it had been in his handwriting until that moment. 

“There’s nothing wrong with having a lot of marks,” Sharpy says, trying to make Seabs and Duncs feel better, “just like there’s nothing wrong with only having one or two.”

“There’s nothing wrong with not having any, either,” Jonny interrupts, and Patrick hadn’t even realised he’d been paying attention to the conversation, “We still don’t know a lot about the marks and how they work. I mean, I don’t think we should shame anyone because of it.”

The team is close both on the road and off. They go out together, they text each other and chirp one another but they don’t live in each other’s pockets when they’re not on a roadie. Patrick’s never paid much attention to any of the guy’s soulmarks unless they make a point of showing him. Jonny is the exception to this rule. Some nights, when it’s late and Patrick doesn’t have the self-control to look away, he can’t not look at Jonny’s.

Jonny now has thirteen tallys scribbled across his wrist, some red and some black but still mostly black – boasting reciprocity. He never tries to hide them, either, not like some of the others, but, like Patrick, he doesn’t go out of his way to talk about them either. He just accepts that that’s the way things are. Moves on.

“ I’m not saying there is,” Sharpy concedes, “but I’ve never met anyone who hasn’t had any. It’s just weird, right? Probably a symptom of, like, psychopathy or something?”

Patrick puts his drink down before he can drop it. He’d chosen to stick with soda, even while Sharpy had been urging him to take advantage of still being an unknown. 

Jonny had shrugged, said, “This won’t be happening once we win the Cup,” like it was a sure thing. Still, Patrick hadn’t been convinced. He kind of regrets his decision now, though, when his hands start shaking and he can’t blame the feeling in his stomach on too much booze and not enough food.

Patrick looks around the table, trying to gauge everyone’s reaction to Sharpy’s latest contribution to the scientific community of speaking out your ass.

Jonny looks offended, but Seabs and Duncs are nodding thoughtfully.

“An inability to form a connection,” Seabs adds, “Empathy. Kind of like those serial killers who only have scars.”

That feeling in Patrick’s stomach intensifies. He’s done here. He pushes out of the booth, disrupting both Seabs and Duncs as he gets out, making hand gestures that he hopes conveys “gotta piss” and not something like “I’ve spent a decade thinking there was something wrong with me, but I never thought it was psychopathic tendencies.” 

The bathroom is empty when he gets there. Relieved, he just stands in the middle of the room, willing the night to hurry up and pass. He didn’t even want to come out when he was invited, but Jonny had been going and Patrick still feels weird when he’s in their shared room during roadies and Jonny’s not there. 

Jonny’s always the one who unpacks his things like they’re on vacation, rather than just staying for a night, and Patrick hates it. He chirps him for it, calling Jonny messy and ridiculous, but really the only problem he has with rooming with Jonny is that he feels like an intruder. Jonny turns everywhere he stays into a home, and Patrick never thought he’d have one of those again after he moved out of the Kane family household.

The bathroom grounds Kaner some, reminds him that he’s freaking out a long way away from home over an issue that’s going to follow him around no matter where he is. He should be over it by now, he thinks, is disappointed that he still gets caught up on what other people think. Even if the other people are his teammates, practically his family by choice, and don’t know that they’re calling him a psychopath incapable of feelings to his face.

Patrick closes his eyes. The door opens behind him, but he stays turned away, hoping that the person will just leave when they realise an existential crisis is currently in play. 

“You okay?” Jonny asks. 

Patrick sighs, opens his and turns around. 

“I’m fine, just needed to get away.” 

His voice is rough, but he’s fine, can just blame it on exhaustion. 

“Yeah,” Jonny nods, takes a step closer like the bathroom is just as comfortable as their shared room at the hotel, “I thought you might. You never really talk about your marks.”

Patrick can feel his heart speed up at the words, knows that this means Jonny hasn’t tried to take a look at his arm, doesn’t know that Patrick is a freak. 

“It’s just personal, you know?” He says, because that’s still true even if Jonny’s going to take a different meaning from his words, “and I don’t want to be judged for having too little or too many.”

Jonny laughs, loudly and without humour, “I know what you mean.”

He grabs Patrick’s hand, rearranges them so that Patrick is holding onto Jonny’s arm and exposing his wrist. 

Patrick looks cautiously, not used to being invited to take a look like this. It says a lot in terms of how close they are, how much Jonny must trust Patrick. He can’t stop himself from smiling despite the situation.

There’s a new mark. A red one. Patrick hasn’t seen it before, so it must be recent. More than that, though, Jonny’s been doing nothing that would suggest he even had his eye on someone new. He hasn’t been ditching out of practice like the other guys try to do whenever they get a new mark, and he hasn’t been shopping around for new cologne or sending Patrick photos of his date outfits and asking for advice. 

Seabs has always been adamant that Jonny was a big offender when it came to his wardrobe choices on date, going as far as insisting that’s why some of the marks on Jonny’s arm remain red. 

“I know what you mean about being judged,” Jonny says, eyes boring into Patrick’s own as he gestures to his wrist, “This isn’t normal, you know, but it’s not the end of the world. You can’t let them define your life, man.” 

Patrick sighs, “I don’t.” 

“The way you look whenever they’re brought up,” Jonny says, “you look like you’re in actual pain. You know no one cares, right? Even if you had a scar. The team would understand.”

Patrick shrugs, considers what Jonny’s saying, “even if I had a scar?” 

“I peeked,” Jonny admits, cheeks flushed, “back when we were kids. You had a mark back then, so I figured it might have scarred over.”

Patrick shakes his head, resolute, “It didn’t,” doesn’t add on that no one died, that he just washed it off with soap instead. 

“If you’re really worried you could cover them with concealer,” Jonny suggests, “but I don’t think you should have to.”

Patrick knows Jonny’s stance on using makeup to hide the marks. It’s a popular topic that journalists tend to bring up a lot whenever they get to cover the great Jonathan Toews. No one else in the league has as many tally marks as Jonny, no one even remotely in the public eye does either. There’s something embarrassing about it, like it’s an admission that you wear your heart on your sleeve, maybe. Jonny always shuts those questions down whenever they’re brought up at press events. 

“Would you like to wear concealer?” A journalist, female, had asked once.

She’d only been curious, not looking as if she were waiting to make a joke like the male journalists tend to whenever the issue of using makeup to cover the marks are brought up.

“I _would_ like to get back to the point,” Jonny had said through clenched teeth, tediously dragging the interview back on track. 

“I don’t want to wear concealer,” Patrick responds, startled to find that it’s true. Sure, he doesn’t actually have anything to conceal, but the point is the same. He doesn’t want to have to wear makeup to pretend to be something that he’s not. He just doesn’t want to have to deal with the inevitable fallout if he is comfortable enough to admit to not having been in love. 

“Come on,” Jonny says, breaking the moment, “we should get back out there before Sharpy starts making excuses for us.”

Patrick nods, washes his hands because he can’t not go to a public bathroom and just walk out. That’s gross. 

Jonny only rolls his eyes. 

When they get back to the table, Sharpy does not disappoint. 

“Hey Tazer,” Sharpy whistles, looking from Jonny to Patrick and back to Jonny, “did you get yourself another tally while you were in there?” 

He wiggles his eyebrows, and Patrick kind of wants to punch him in the face for bringing up the soulmarks just as soon as Jonny’s talked him down from worrying. 

“It’s not–” he starts, looking over to Jonny for help.

Jon, though, is pointedly ignoring them. He’s struggling to get back into the booth, is actively crawling over Sharpy just so he doesn’t have to acknowledge him. It’s clear that he’s heard the conversation though; flush high on his neck, the way he resolutely avoids eye contact with Patrick for the rest of the evening.

Patrick thinks about what Sharpy’s saying, about how Jon’s reacting. He thinks about the new mark, and the insistent red colour that promised unrequited love was Jon’s current state of being. He thinks of the way the red looked besides all the black marks, and suddenly he can’t think of anything else.

He gets drunk. He tows the line of “completely fucking blind”, and when he goes back to a girl’s apartment, ignoring the looks Jonny shoots him as he chats her up, he’s surprised he can still even get it up.

Honestly, he’s a bit proud, but he doesn’t have time to dwell on it. Not with what the next week brings when they get home. 

He goes to practice and he plays, and once the game finishes he goes to a bar, gets wasted, picks up a new girl. They don’t always go back to his place. He hates having to share his bed after it’s done, but he can never actually bring himself to kick them out. 

He’s weak. 

So, most of the time, he ends up at theirs. It’s a great way of seeing the city. He learns his way around the greater Chicago area, forgets it the next morning when he wakes up, but that’s okay. 

When he talks to his Mom on the phone, and she says, “Have you been up to much? Besides hockey, of course.”

He answers, “Not really, I’m still getting used to everything here. I’m doing a lot of sightseeing and things,” and it’s not really a lie. 

He keeps it up for a couple of weeks, juggling the act of being a competent hockey player and being someone that can’t stand themselves when they’re sober. Jonny tries to talk to him about it one night, but Patrick doesn’t give him a chance. He buys Jonny a shot, and disappears the second he’s got his head tipped back to do it. 

It comes to a head finally when _Deadspin_ gets wind of what rookie Patrick Kane is up to. It’s his first controversial moment in the media, and the text he receives from James (“tbh im surprised it took this long”) says a lot about his future in the tabloids.

His mom calls him, as mothers tend to when their child is misbehaving all over the front page of the newspaper. He takes the call, feeling guilty when he promises to change, that last week was just a one off, even whilst having dried cum caked to the inside of his thighs.

At least the dude still isn’t in his bed.

“What’s this really about?” She finally asks, sighing when Patrick insists he doesn’t need her to come down to Chicago.

And. He just breaks. 

“I still don’t have any marks,” he admits, “and Jon has so many, Ma, and the rest of the guys. They all have someone, you know?” 

“Oh, Patrick,” she sighs, just like she did when he was fourteen, just like she did every other time something revolving the soul marks came up, “have you considered talking to someone?”

Patrick hadn’t. He did, briefly, now that she’d brought it up, but immediately shut the idea down. 

“No, I don’t need it. I’ll be okay.”

She says something, but he misses it, instead starts scraping at his thighs with a nail. 

“Pat, you there?” 

He feels disgusting, not just in need of a shower but in need of a new life. He’s embarrassed and tired, and wants to sit on the floor of his shower and never leave. 

“Okay, Mom, I’ll consider it.”

He books the appointment after he showers, feels like this is the first step toward becoming a real adult. 

***

The therapy does a lot to help him become more comfortable with himself. Pat “Just call me Pat” Verbeek, his therapist, introduces him to the idea of aromanticism and asexuality, which Patrick is decidedly not as is very clear from the _Deadspin_ headlines. He spends the night on a Google binge, and settles on the idea, that maybe Jonny isn’t the love of his life but he’s more than just a friend, that that can happen with aromantic people. 

He still feels a bit broken, at times, when the guys make a comment or he looks at Seabs and Duncs and realises that he’ll never have that. He can never give anyone that.

It only convinces him to keep going to the appointments. To ask if it’s okay to call Pat when he’s on the road, or if there’s somewhere else he can reach out to. He doesn’t talk to his mom about it, or his sisters, or anyone on the team when he disappears for an hour at a time with his phone tightly clutched in his hand. 

“Got yourself a girlfriend, Peeks?” Sharpy asks one night, leering when Patrick tries to sneak out of the locker room. 

Patrick freezes, doesn’t know whether to agree just to get Sharpy off his back. He settles for something vague, leaving Sharpy smirking and Jonny looking like he’s considering something. 

Patrick wouldn’t be able to tell you what the feeling in his stomach is, but he does talk about it to Pat for forty-five minutes.

***

Jonny takes to covering his marks. No one knows why, except for maybe Seabs. No one on the team asks Jonny about it, no one chirps him for suddenly getting sentimental, after Seabs catches Patrick looking and snaps at him to mind his own business. 

“I wasn’t–” he argues, but it’s pretty weak. 

Seabs just shakes his head, opens his mouth like he wants to say something else before Jonny cuts in.

“Leave him alone, Seabs,” he doesn’t look up from what he’s doing, though, and Patrick’s more curious about that then why he’s covering the marks in the first place.

It didn’t take the press too long to figure out that they shouldn’t bring it up either. Jonny snaps, “I’d really just like to talk about the game,” like he usually does, but then they start hassling the rest of the team when usually they wouldn’t bother.

“Well, you see,” Sharpy says, face serious in front of the cameras, “there was an incident in the locker room recently when our Captain, Jonny Toews, turned up with a new mark.”

The press light up at the admission, eagerly throwing out more questions than anyone can care to pay attention to. Patrick pauses, knowing that Sharpy is just leading them on but just content to see where it goes.

“It was red. He came up to me, he looked at me and he said, ‘Sharp, I know you love Abby, but I can’t stop thinking about you–”

He’s cut off by the journalists, each letting out a groan of disappointment. Some make notes though, and Patrick can’t stop himself from grinning when he thinks about the headlines that will be circulating over the next few days. It’s obviously a joke, but there will still be at least one story making a hint toward the unrequited love between #19 and #10. Patrick can’t wait to read them, if only to chirp Jonny over the fact half of Chicago is going to believe he’s in love with the alternate captain.

Patrick doesn’t see who it is, Seabs maybe, but hears Sharpy get told to quit playing around. Sharpy is nodding seriously when Patrick turns back to look at him, but soon after he’s back to grinning in the face of the camera and discussing the game.

The mood in the locker room is split. 

Half of the team are relaxed, relieved to have just gotten out of the game alive. It was a hard one, and Patrick wants to collapse face-first onto his bed and not move for at least twelve hours. There’s a pain in his thigh that has him putting off getting into the shower, if only because he doesn’t want to face the bruise that’s going to be there. He used to think of them like trophies, a testament to the time he spent on the ice and how much effort, and blood, he was putting into the sport he loved. 

Still, he’s somewhere between the first group, those who are relieved, and the second, those that are probably seconds away from putting their fist through a wall.

Jonny, recently Captained, is definitely taking the loss hard. He’s doing his own interview near Patrick, and for all intents and purposes should not want to talk about the shitfight that was the game. But, he is. They badger him with the usual questions, a few daring ones even bringing up the words Sharpy’s spilled just a few stalls away. He shuts those down like he usually would, neither confirming nor denying the rumours. Patrick can’t tell if it’s on purpose or if Jonny’s got his head that far stuck up his ass over the game that he doesn’t even know what rumours they’re talking about.

The interviews finish up soon after and the guys who haven’t already hit the showers do so. Patrick takes the shower on the end, where he usually ends up, and stands under the stream without paying too much attention to cleaning himself. He can hear the others moving around him, and different people talking out in the corridor but he ignores all of that.

He feels useless after that game, can’t imagine how Jonny can even still be functioning with the amount of sheer responsibility he needlessly carries around on his shoulders. Jon’s all about being a team player. He always talks about “we, the Blackhawks,” and “us, me and the guys,” whenever they win. But, when they lose? It’s, “I should have tried harder,” “I really let the team down,” “I wasn’t playing my best.” Even when he snaps and calls the team out on their shit, it only ever lasts during the game itself. 

Off the ice, it’s a whole other story. 

Patrick hates it.

After just standing in the shower and thinking about Jonny, and not in the way he’s normally standing in the shower and thinking about Jonny (not that he’d ever actively admit that, or think those thoughts while in the shared showers), he shuts the water off. He grabs his towel and wraps it around his waist as he makes his way back out to the locker room, nodding at the guys as he passes. There’s a couple of them still milling around, but they’re all already in their post-game suits. 

Jonny’s not.

Surprise.

Jon’s cleared out the middle of the floor, is halfway through a set of push-ups. 

Seabs is looking on worriedly, trying to block the view of a couple of journalists still hanging around. 

“Come on, man,” Patrick says, carefully to stand back enough so as not to accidentally flash Jonny, “go shower. We can get something to eat.”

Jonny doesn’t stop, just carries on undeterred. Patrick assumes that it could be worse, he could’ve taken the invitation as a challenge to do better, or shut it down with, “I don’t deserve it.” 

It’s the small things like Jonny not moving on to one-armed push-ups that has him nodding, accepting the decision for now.

Patrick gets changed, but doesn’t leave. He just waves goodbye at the players who do, nods in understanding when Seabs finally gives up and leaves, telling Jonny to “take a fucking shower, you stink, man” before he goes. Patrick doesn’t begrudge him for wanting out. It’s been a shitty season, and bringing hockey back to Chicago is taking more of an effort than Patrick first thought it would be when he was laughing it up in the United Center.

He doesn’t regret it, any of it, of course, and he plans to stay for as long as Chicago will have him. Still, it does get difficult some nights; he’s away from his family, from his friends, and James; he doesn’t know many people out here besides his teammates; he still lives in fear of being outed as the only NHL player without a mark.

Jonny finishes up his post-game workout and heads off straight to the showers, jaw tense and fist clenched like he’s just waiting to find a place to put it. Patrick doesn’t even try to talk him down from whatever it is he’s feeling, just waits it out while Jonny showers, flicking through one of the books his sister had lent him last time his family came to visit him.

“What are you still doing here, Kaner?” Jonny asks fifteen minutes later, towel gripped loosely around his waist. 

Patrick determinedly does not look at how low-slung that towel is, how it’s leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination.

“I, uh–“ he clears his throat, drags his eyes to the general area of Tazer’s face, “I thought we could get something to eat. You know how I hate being alone after a game like that.”

It’s unfair, Patrick thinks, because he hates suffering losses just as much as Jonny does, but he doesn’t shoulder the blame in quite the same way. He does feel that same responsibility, that moment of, “I fucked up,” even if it solely wasn’t on him. 

He also thinks it’s unfair that he feels a sort of responsibility to Jonny. Jonny, with all his marks, who is completely broken, just like Patrick, but in a completely different way. It took Patrick a while to get it, that Jonny wasn’t lucky, and that having that many marks wasn’t a particularly good thing. Patrick still didn’t care about any of that, but Jonny was treated in the media just as bad as Patrick would have been if he ever dared to be as open over his soulmark situation as Jonny had once been with his own. Despite all of the times Jon’s supposedly been in love, though, despite how many of those have been in reciprocated, Patrick’s still the only one that ever makes the effort to draw Jonny away from his self-hate benders.

He’s the only one, as far as he knows, that can’t get to sleep at night when he considers what Jonny’s probably doing to himself; how hard he’s pushing himself.

Jonny looks at Patrick, clearly considering the benefits of going out to dinner with Patrick versus working himself to death. He softens, eventually, and Patrick knows that he’s made up his mind, has to actively hold himself back from hugging him. Patrick’s always been affectionate with his sisters and his mom, and even sometimes his dad, and it’s naturally carried across to the team. He knows that his cellys after goals are a little more emotional than the other guys’ tend to be, and he knows that if Jon gets the assist, or if Patrick does on Jon’s goal, it’s just the two of them. Patrick doesn’t even think about opening his arms anymore when Jonny comes nearby, just moves on automatic to bring it in like he would with one of his sisters or his parents.

“What do you feel like?” Patrick asks, when Jonny’s finally dressed and moved more towards the ‘functional member of society’ end of the scale. Well, as much as Jonny can be on that side of the scale.

“We could try that new organic–”

“I think Chinese is a great idea!” Patrick interrupts, adamant that Jonny does not eat a health-conscious meal that will leave him hungry even as he’s talking shit about the nutritional value and how great he feels. 

Jonny scowls, “I don’t¬¬–”

Patrick doesn’t say anything, effectively cutting Jonny off with nothing but a frown. He can’t help the surge of pride that flows through him when Jon finally nods, giving in.

“Let me just,” Jonny makes a gesture, and Patrick doesn’t get it until he realises that Jonny’s wrist is still bare. He hadn’t put any concealer back on after his shower.

Patrick stares, he can’t help himself, hadn’t had an opportunity to do it in months, “Don’t worry about it, man,” and if there’s a whine in his voice, Jonny doesn’t call him out on it.

Jon nods, “Okay,” he still sounds hesitant though, and Patrick doesn’t want him to change his mind.

“Look, we can just go back to my place if you don’t feel like dealing with people?” 

Jonny nods, and Patrick calls them a cab.

“I’m sorry,” Jonny says later, sitting on Patrick’s couch.

They’re watching _Friends_ reruns on the TV, because it was either this or watching the game tape. Patrick absolutely did not want to watch the game tape with Jonny. Just, no. 

Patrick pauses the TV at Jonny’s apology, drops his fork in the container and places his empty carton on the table.

“What for?” He asks, even though he knows.

“I let you down,” Jon answers, placing his own half-eaten food on the table beside Patrick’s, “I let the team down. I said I was going to bring hockey back, but what are we really doing?”

Patrick leans back into the couch, wondering if Jon’s aware that’s he’s been tracing the marks on his arm as he apologised. He reaches an arm around Jon’s shoulder for no other reason than because he wants to.

“I think we’re bringing hockey back,” Patrick says resolutely, determined; he will always fight Jonny on this, “just like you said we would.”

“Not if I keep playing like that.”

“Not if _we_ keep playing like that,” Pat corrects, doesn’t even realise that he’s moved his fingers to card through Jon’s hair.

His hand stills suddenly, and he can feel himself flush with embarrassment. He feels like he did when he first drew on his wrist with his sister’s lip liner. 

He doesn’t have time to be embarrassed though, not when Jonny makes a noise, says, “Keep doing that,” in a voice that shows he’s scared Patrick won’t listen.

Patrick resumes just as Jonny starts shifting his head, acting as if he can forcefully make Patrick return to what he was doing.

They sit in silence, like that, until the episode finishes and Jonny starts making excuses to leave. They have an optional skate in the morning, even though Jonny acts as if he doesn’t know what ‘optional’ means, and practice later on in the day. 

“I have to get up early,” Jonny says, hands running down the back of his head, chasing Patrick’s touch, “so, I’ll see you at Johnny’s?”

Patrick nods, reluctant to get up and walk Jonny to the door. Part of him doesn’t want Jonny to leave since he’ll just go back to worrying that the Captain isn’t just going to bed like he says he will be, and the other part of him doesn’t want Jonny to leave because it’s _Jonny_. 

Patrick wants to be alone, always does after a loss, but Jonny doesn’t count. Patrick doesn’t feel the same pressure around Jonny that he does around other people, which is all kinds of fucked up because Jonny is constantly pressuring the team to do better. Be better. 

“You don’t–” Patrick starts, standing up, “If you want to stay the night, you can.”

Jonny pauses from where he’s fumbling for his keys, and Patrick doesn’t understand it, how Jonny maybe has two pockets in his suit pants but can still never find anything. 

“Yeah?”

Jonny looks hopeful, and Patrick doesn’t get why it’s Jonny who looks as if he thinks Pat is doing him a favour. Jonny got Patrick drafted to the Blackhawks. Jonny made Patrick a better player. Jonny talked Patrick down that night in the bathroom, told him that they were freaks together even if he didn’t understand the extent of it. 

“Yeah,” Patrick answers, suddenly nervous he reaches out to tug on Jon’s arm.

He’s hesitant, turns Jon’s arm slowly as if he’s expecting to be called out on what he’s doing any second now. Beside him, Jon freezes, but when Patrick turns to him he doesn’t see any hesitation, any fear, just an invitation to continue.

He’s had an idea ever since Jonny started covering up his marks, but Jonny didn’t talk about it, and Patrick couldn’t bring it up. There’s still the same number of marks as there were before, and the last one is still red. Even if he was expecting it, and he had been, he can’t help the disappointment that floods him. 

“It’s okay,” Jon says, eyes fixed on his marks, “I wasn’t going to act on it.” 

Patrick sighs, nods, lets his fingers keep tracing that single tally mark. They’re all in different handwritings, a signifier of each person that Jonny has been in love with. Patrick’s is spaced awkwardly, more crooked than any of the others and slightly bent. He’s seen a couple like it before, on the girls at school, but seeing it now, looking at it properly now that he has the chance, just makes him sad. 

“I’m sorry,” Patrick says, voice small, “I don’t–”

He doesn’t know what he’s trying to say, but it’s not whatever Jon thinks. 

Jonny takes his arm back, looks away, “It’s okay, you don’t feel the same.” 

And Patrick wants to fight it, he wants to kiss Jonny to prove that he’s wrong. Pat _does_ feel the same. But, he can’t, not when the truth, the reality of his blank wrist, is right there, just hidden under a couple of bracelets his youngest sister gave him.

“I’m sorry,” Patrick repeats.

“Don’t be,” Jonny answers, throwing Pat a self-deprecating smile just to twist the knife, “I’m just going to head out, okay? I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Patrick nods, takes long enough to collect himself that he doesn’t even try to say anything else until Jon’s got the front door open.

“Jonny–”

“Kaner,” Jonny sighs, standing in the doorway but not facing Patrick, “just drop it, okay? It doesn’t mean anything.”

“It does,” he argues, voice small. 

He feels lost. 

“Clearly not,” Jonny laughs, no humour, as he makes a gesture to highlight the mark on his arm, “but it’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Patrick never intended to keep Jonny in the dark for this long about his marks, he always thought that maybe one day he’d be able to tell someone about it, someone who wasn’t a Kane. 

He guesses today may as well be that day. 

“I don’t¬–” he starts, lost.

“I know,” Jonny interrupts, but he’s still not fucking getting it.

“No!” Patrick says, louder than Jonny was expecting if his flinch is anything to go by, “I do. I mean, I thought I did, but,” he sighs.

He takes the ever-present bracelets off his wrist. There’s only three, but they’re bright and bulky enough to hide the skin of his wrist. He only ever takes them off before a game, just as he’s putting his gloves on, tells everyone that he’s wearing them because his sisters made them for him.

It’s only partially a lie.

Jonny looks hesitantly when Patrick finally holds his wrist out, has to brace his arm against his side to keep it from shaking. He feels sick in stomach, humiliated and reliving every moment that he’s had to live through up until this point. The lip liner. The ten seconds a day it took to draw on his marks during school. The girls in his high school. James. 

He closes his eyes, can’t look at Jonny’s reaction.

“I don’t,” Jonny starts, stops to clear his throat, “I don’t get it.”

“There’s no one,” Patrick admits, eyes stinging, “you have, like, twenty marks and I don’t have one. I don’t have any.” 

“I don’t have twenty,” Jonny counters, completely missing the point here.

“There’s something wrong with me,” Patrick voices the opinion for the first time since that day in the bathroom with his mom, he’s tried to deny it. He’s tried to think that there are more things to life than the marks, that they don’t mean shit. But, here he is. This is what he thinks, “I don’t know why it never happened. I tried. I tried so hard, and then there was you, and I thought. I thought.”

He doesn’t know what he’s trying to say. _What did he think?_ That Jonathan Toews could fix him as a detour on his mission to fix hockey in Chicago? That he didn’t know shit about himself because he thought he was in love? He had never cared for anyone besides his family as much as he did for Jonny, and that still didn’t even warrant a single fucking mark?

“I’m psychopathic,” he ends up saying, “you heard Sharpy and Seabs. I can’t, I can’t–”

Jonny doesn’t let him finish. Just takes a step forward until he’s bracketing Patrick, effectively hugging him. Patrick doesn’t even know when he started crying, doesn’t realise that he is until he notices the damp patch he’s leaving on Jonny’s shirt and the way his eyes burn, the way he can no longer breathe through his nose.

“I’m seeing a therapist,” he admits, eyes closed and words muffled by the material of Jon’s shirt, “I’ve been seeing one for a while. He says there’s nothing wrong with me.”

Jonny leans back, and for a second Patrick panics, but Jon’s just trying to get comfortable, to see Patrick’s face. 

“There isn’t.”

Patrick shrugs, knows better than try to argue with Jonny. He doesn’t know what to do, so he doesn’t think about it, he just leans forward and presses his lips to Jon’s. 

The kiss is brief, and Jon doesn’t even react, just stands still, hands hovering like he’s too scared to actually touch Patrick.

“I want to try,” Patrick starts when he finally withdraws, noticing that Jonny doesn’t look angry or frustrated but curious, interested, “I want to try to have this with you.”

Pat told him that just because he didn’t have marks didn’t mean he couldn’t try a relationship. Patrick fought him over it at first, saying that no one was going to love someone who couldn’t love them back. Pat, with a sad smile, said, “Patrick, there’s plenty of people in the world that love people who don’t love them back.”

“Are you sure?” Jonny asks, and Patrick can’t stop himself. 

He leans forward and kisses Jonny again, this time more demanding than just a simple brush of lips. 

“I’m sure,” and he is, he’s never been so sure of anything in his life.

They end up in the bedroom, but Jonny stops Patrick before he lets it get too far.

“Maybe, we should take it slow,” Jonny suggests, making it clear, and not for the first time, that he has far more self-control than Patrick does. 

Patrick whines, actually whines, and says, “We don’t have to.”

“I think we should,” Jonny sits up, creating distance between the pair and Patrick’s too scared to argue, too scared to lose this when he thinks that maybe he’s beginning to work things out. 

“If that’s what you want,” he settles on instead.

***

Three months pass before they try to have a serious relationship talk. Patrick mostly ignores the idea of what they are, deciding to let Jonny be the one to label it if he needs the definition. 

Patrick’s not boxed in by any soul marks, and he’s not ready to be boxed in by any words either. 

Jonny decides to define them a different way though. He doesn’t pressure Patrick into anything, and he never causes a fuss when Patrick is quick to drop Jon’s hand whenever the team walk into the room. Similarly, he tells Patrick to stop when he needs space, that he’s still not ready to sleep together just yet. Patrick doesn’t push him on that issue either, because if Jonny can wait on love than Patrick can wait on sex. 

“Hey,” Jonny says, kissing Patrick only seconds after Jonny’s alarm, fucking _Chelsea Dagger_ , woke them up, “you have your appointment today, right?”

Patrick still sees Pat, not as often as he did before but at least once a week. They talk about Jonny a lot, and sometimes Patrick reflects back on the things that resulted with him on _Deadspin_ , and Patrick feels better. He doesn’t feel fixed, doesn’t think he ever will, but he feels better, more comfortable in his skin since Chloe Ethers came to school with her first mark and the teachers told him there was a soulmate out there for everyone. 

“Um, yeah, why?” 

Patrick and Jonny don’t talk about the sessions. Patrick might mention that he has an appointment, but leaves it up to Jonny to assume whether it’s something else routine or if it’s with Pat. 

Jonny’s only ever brought it up once. They’d been in the bedroom, and it was familiar territory, and Patrick was ready. Jonny wasn’t. Patrick understands, but sometimes in the middle of things, it’s hard to take a step back and really look at it. So, when Jonny said “stop,” Patrick had frozen, Patrick had thought that Jonny was changing his mind on all of it. 

It wasn’t the first time Patrick’s had a panic attack in his life, but it was the first he’d had in front of someone else. They didn’t happen often, and he could mostly talk himself down, but with Jonny being there, Jonny sitting beside him in nothing but boxer briefs all the while rubbing Patrick’s back, made it worse. 

“Do you need to call Pat?” Jonny had said when Patrick’s breathing had finally settled, “I can leave. If you want me to.”

Patrick had broken up with him, then and there, told him to get the fuck out. Jonny had, barely even fighting him on it, and Patrick had felt like shit. Patrick watched Jonny pick up his clothes, put them back on as calmly and rationally as he looked on the ice. When Jon left the apartment, with Patrick still sitting naked on the bed, it only took a few minutes for him to drag his clothes back on, to psych himself up for the drive over to Jonny’s to apologise.

He hadn’t needed to, in the end, because Jonny had been waiting outside Patrick’s door. He’d been sitting opposite the door, legs tucked up underneath him and with his phone in his hand. He looked understanding, like he wasn’t convinced Patrick was psychopathic and needed to be locked up.

“I knew you didn’t mean it,” Jonny said, determined, “I thought I’d just wait for you to cool down.” 

Patrick had nodded, unable to use his words.

Jonny hadn’t brought up Pat again since then, so Patrick was surprised when he did.

“I wanted to drive you to your appointment. If you don’t mind.”

Patrick kissed Jonny in response, nuzzling his face into the crook of Jonny’s neck before he answers, “You don’t have to, I don’t mind driving.” 

“I want to,” Jonny replies, sounding sure of himself, “I want to be there for you.” 

Patrick nods, says, “I want you to, then.”

The drive to Pat’s is silent, but not awkward. Patrick isn’t sure if Jonny is just going to drop him off, but he’s not surprised when Jonny spends ten minutes trying to find a park and then insists on walking Patrick into the building.

“Do you mind if I wait here?”

Patrick thinks about it. He doesn’t always leave the session in tears, but it had been known to happen. He usually avoided Jonny for a couple of hours after those days, even though these days they spent most of their time together. 

Patrick shrugs, sits in one of the chairs and watches as Jonny picks up several brochures on mental health. 

“You should have brought a book,” he says.

“These are fine,” Jonny shoots back, settling into the seat beside Patrick.

It doesn’t take long for his name to be called. The clinic is generally pretty on time when it comes to Patrick’s appointments, lest they’re responsible for him getting caught out at a psychiatrist’s office. No one needs those headlines in their life.

“How are you doing today?” Pat asks when Patrick pulls the door shut behind him.

“Pretty good,” Patrick answers honestly, “Jonny drove me here today.”

Pat nods, gestures to the seat for Patrick to sit down, “And how are the two of you doing?”

“We’re okay,” he answers, just thankful that it’s the truth.

They are okay, they’re better than okay. 

Still, sometimes they have their moments. They still shouldn’t get along, they still spend most of their time on the bench shouting at one another until their voices go hoarse, but it works for them. Patrick ends his days happier than he can ever remember being, playing the little spoon to Jonny’s big spoon. And Jonny doesn’t begrudge Pat, he doesn’t turn it against him when they argue, even when Patrick’s being especially vindictive, and he doesn’t give Patrick any more reasons to try and break up with him again. 

“We’re doing really well, actually,” he corrects, proud to be the reason that causes Pat’s answering smile.

***

Patrick’s going down on Jonny when it happens, because of course that’s his life. He’ll never be able to tell the story to his parents, or his sisters, or their children if they ever have any. 

He’s been trying to perfect the art of deepthroating for a while now, just can’t get the hang of it like Jonny seems to be able to. Jonny’s holding onto his hair, which Patrick doesn’t mind, but he’s starting to choke and he just need to pull off. 

Jonny makes a questioning noise, frowning down at Patrick but releasing his grip nonetheless.

That’s when Patrick sees it. 

“Jonny,” he breathes, frozen, staring at Jon’s wrist. 

Jon’s still got the same amount of marks as he always does. There’s still more black than there is red, but that last one, that last one that seems out of place in Patrick’s handwriting, is no longer one of the few that suggests Jonny’s love isn’t always requited. 

He runs his fingers over Jonny’s wrist, aware that his face is still just inches away from Jonny’s dick. Usually, that would be something he found distracting, but not now.

“Jonny, look,” he says, excited, trying to pull at Jonny’s own wrist to twist it closer toward it’s owner.

“Ow, fuck, Patrick,” Jonny swears, finally looking away from where Patrick’s freaking out and instead turning his focus on his arm, “holy shit.”

He sounds in awe, like he can’t believe what he’s looking at. Patrick can’t either, to be honest.

“Look at me,” Patrick says, reaching shaking hands to wipe away the tears from his eyes. 

Jonny cups his jaw, leans down to kiss Patrick.

“It’s not on my wrist,” he admits, disappointed when he looks down and his arms are still bare.

Jonny spends the rest of the night searching Patrick’s body. He presses a kiss to each empty stretch of skin, just welcoming the opportunity to explore. 

The kisses are growing lazy, but Patrick’s not complaining. 

Well, he’s not, that is, until Jonny stops. 

Then he feels something else, but he’s still not complaining.

“I found it,” Jonny says, whispering. 

“Why are you whispering?” Patrick questions, trying to chirp, but his voice isn’t much louder, “shit,” he settles on.

“Yeah,” Jonny breathes, rubbing his thumb across the skin behind Patrick’s ear.

It’s annoying, Patrick discovers, trying to angle a mirror so he can look behind his ear. He makes Jonny take a photo of it on his phone first, but it comes out blurry, a testament to Jonny’s shaking hands, to Jonny’s nerves.

It looks as if it’s been drawn with a ruler. There’s nothing to even suggest that it belongs to Jon, that Patrick’s heart belongs to Jon, but Patrick’s not surprised. He doesn’t care. He’d grown used to the idea that he was never going to get one at all, that Jonny was going to be forced to settle for Patrick out of some sort of Canadian good will, and he hadn’t hated that idea as long as it meant that Patrick and Jonny could still be together.

This, though? This feeling that he’s been waiting the better part of over a decade to have? 

It makes up for everything that brought him here.


End file.
